Three Sabbaths: the Lord’s Sabbath,
the Jewish Sabbath, and the Papal Sabbath Study No. 233

O

ne can in truth speak of Sabbaths in the plural only as one can speak
of many gods. “There is no God but one. For though there be that are called
gods, whether in heaven or on earth; as there are gods many, and lords many;
yet to us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto
Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through
Him.” See I Corinthians 8:4-6. So, though there are various Sabbaths, so
called, there is but one true Sabbath, the Sabbath of the Lord.

The Lord’s Sabbath

The word “Sabbath”
means rest. It is a Hebrew word
translated into the English language. When the Hebrews used the word “Sabbath,”
it conveyed the same idea to them that the word “rest” does to us. The fourth commandment therefore really says
to us: “Remember the rest day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and
do all thy work: but the seventh day is the rest of the Lord thy God: in it
thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy
manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is
within thy gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and
all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the
rest day and hallowed it,” Exodus 20:8-11.

We must not make the
mistake of judg­ing the Lord’s rest based on what men are accus­tomed to call
rest. God is not a man. We should rather learn from God’s rest what rest really
is. God’s rest is not mere physical rest from weariness. This we know from two
facts: first, “God is spirit,” John 4:24. Not “a spirit,” as though He were one of many; but He is Spirit,
as it is rendered in the margin of the Revised Version. Second, “The everlast­ing God, the Lord, the
Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary,” Isaiah
40:28. The Lord there­fore did not
rest because He was tired, and His rest is not physical, but spiritual, since
He is Spirit. “They that worship Him
must worship Him in Spirit and in truth,” John 4:24.

God rested, not
because He was weary, but because His work was finished. When work is finished,
and is well done, nothing but rest remains. In six days God finished His work,
and as He surveyed it, He pro­nounced it “very good.” There was no flaw in it.
It was without fault before Him. Therefore, since God’s work was done and well
done at the close of the sixth day, “He rested on the seventh day from all His
work which He had made.” He had no sad reflections, no regrets. His rest was
not marred, as what man calls rest so often is, by any such thought as
“Tomorrow I must go to work again;” or “I wish I had done this portion a little
differently;” or “If I could do that over again, I could make an improvement;”
or “That last day’s work was so bad that I cannot bear to look at it; I was so
tired when I did it that I couldn’t do it right.” Nothing of the kind. Every
portion of the work, even man, was as perfect as it was possible for it to be,
and God took pure delight in contem­plating the work from which He was resting,
because it was complete and perfect.

This is the rest which
He offers to us. It is not something He imposes on us, but which He, in
everlasting love and kindness, gives to us. Rest is not a task that is laid on
one. It is not a burden. Those who look upon the Sabbath as a burden have no
idea of what the Sabbath of the Lord is. It is rest, perfect, unalloyed rest.

Jesus Christ is the
One by whom the worlds were made, “for in Him were all things created, in the
heavens, and upon the earth,” therefore He is the One who offers us this rest.
To every soul He cries, ‘Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest’,” Matthew 11:28. The rest is found in Him,
because in Him the works of God are com­plet­ed. In Him is the new creation,
and if any man be in Him, he is a new creature. On the cross Jesus cried, “It
is finished,” thus showing that through His cross we find that perfect rest
that comes alone from the finished work of the Lord.

This rest is gained by
faith. “We which believe do enter into rest.” How so? — Because by faith we
have the finished, perfect work of the Lord as our own. “This is the work of
God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent,” John 6:29. Believing Him
means receiving Him; and since in Him the works of God are complete, it follows
that by believing on Him we find rest.

The rest that Jesus
gives is rest from sin. The heavy-laden whom He calls to Him are those who are
burdened with the weight of their sins. All men are thus burdened, “for all
have sinned.” Our best works are utterly worthless. Christ will have a people
who are “zealous of good works,” Titus 2:14, 15; but the good works must
be those which God Himself has wrought for us in Christ. Only His work is
enduring. “His work is honour­able and glorious; and His righteous­ness
endureth forever,” Psalm 111:3.
Therefore, “by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of
yourselves; it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast. For
we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath
before prepared that we should walk in them,” Ephesians 2:8-10. It is “not by works done in righteousness,
which we did ourselves, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the
washing of regenera­tion and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which He poured out
upon us richly, through Jesus Christ our Saviour.” See Titus 3:5, 6. It is by the works of God, therefore, that
we are saved, and not by our own. Good works are in abundance, and they are for
us to do, but through no work of our own, solely through the perfect work of
God in Jesus Christ. If the works were our own, then the rest would be our own.
God gives us His rest, not ours, because only His works can yield perfect rest.
“He hath made His wonderful works to be remembered,” Psalm 111:4, or,
literally, “He hath made a mem­orial for His wondrous works.” That memorial is
the seventh day, the day on which He rested from all His works. That day He has
blessed and sanctified, made holy. Its holiness has never departed from it, for
“whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever.” No matter what man does, nor how
man regards the day, its holiness remains.

“There remaineth
therefore a rest to the people of God,” Hebrews 4:9, and the seventh
day, which God forever declares to be His rest, is that by which He makes known
to us the perfection of His rest, because it calls us to contemplate a finished
and perfect new creation. It reveals to us the everlasting God, the unwearied,
Almighty Creator, who has wrought and laid up great goodness for them that
trust in Him before the sons of men, Psalm 31:19. It reminds us that we are “complete in Him,
which is the head of all principality and power.” It tells us that, although we
have sinned, and brought the curse upon God’s perfect creation, the cross of
Christ, which bears the curse, restores and perpetuates the perfect work of
God, so that through it we may stand without fault before the throne of God, just
as when man was first made. “Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift.”

The Jewish Sabbath

There is such a thing
as “the Jewish Sabbath,” or the Sabbath of the Jews, but it is a far different
thing from the Sabbath of the Lord. Many people imagine that if one observes
the seventh day, he is keeping the Jewish Sabbath; but that does not at all
follow. No one keeps the Jewish Sabbath if he keeps the Sabbath “according to
the commandment.” There is the same difference between the Jewish Sabbath and
the Sabbath of the Lord that there is between a man and God. Let us explain:

“The seventh day is
the Sabbath of the Lord,” but we have seen that the Lord’s rest is spiritual
rest, which the seventh day commem­orates. A man may cease from physical toil
on the seventh day of the week, and not keep the Sabbath of the Lord. If a man
stops work on Friday evening at sunset, and abstains from all labor until the
next day at sunset, merely as a form of worship, and in order that he may be
physically better able to start his work again, or with the thought that he is
thereby performing a duty, and gaining the favor of God, that is not keeping
the Sabbath of the Lord. To keep the Sabbath of the Lord is to delight in the
Lord. Those who do not delight themselves in the Lord, do not keep His Sabbath,
no matter when they abstain from labor.

It is absolutely
impossible for one who is not a Christian to keep the Lord’s Sabbath; for,
as we have seen, God’s rest comes only from His perfect work, which is found
only in Christ. “We which believe do enter into rest.” There­fore no Jew — so
called, as distinguish­ed from a believer in Christ — keeps the Sab­bath of the
Lord, even though he appar­ently rests on the seventh day of the week. His rest
is his own rest, and not the rest of the Lord.

Do you see the
difference? The Jewish Sabbath falls on the same day of the week as the Sabbath
of the Lord, but it is not by any means the same thing. It represents only the
man himself, and his own work. Instead of being the sign of justification by
faith in the work of the Lord, it is the sign of self-righteousness, as
indicated by the question which the Jews asked of Jesus, “What shall we do,
that we might work the works of God?” They counted their own works equal to
God’s works. Their obedience was not the obedience of faith, but only of form.
From such a Sabbath may the Lord deliver us. It is from it that we are
delivered in the Sabbath of the Lord, for we are saved from our own works, and
given the perfect works of the Lord. “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the
Lord,” but let us beware of making it a mere caricature of rest. Let us take it
for what it is: the rest of the Lord.

The Papal Sabbath

This is something
entirely different from the Sabbath of the Jews, and infinitely different from
the Sabbath of the Lord. The Sabbath of the Lord is the acceptance of God’s own
works, and rest in them alone, allowing Him to work both His will and to do His
good pleasure; the Jewish Sabbath represents the vain attempt of zealous and
self-confident men to do the works which God Himself does, and which God alone
can do; but the pope’s Sabbath signifies the substitution of man’s work for
God’s work as being not only as good, but even better. It dispenses with even
the form of the commandment of the Lord. Let us see how this is.

The Lord’s Sabbath has
been sufficient­ly dwelt on for the present. We know what it is. We have seen
that the Jews’ Sabbath is the observing of the form of the Lord’s Sabbath,
without the substance, which can come only by faith. It falls on the same day,
but is man’s Sabbath, not the Lord’s. The papal Sabbath has nothing in common
with the Sabbath of the Lord, not even in form, but instead utterly repudiates
it. Thus, a Roman Catholic book, entitled A Sure Way to Find out the True
Religion, says:

“The keeping holy the
Sunday is a thing absolutely necessary to salvation; and yet this is nowhere
put down in the Bible; on the contrary, the Bible says, ‘Remember the Sabbath
day, to keep it holy’ (Exodus 20:8), which is Saturday, and not Sunday;
therefore the Bible does not contain all things necessary to salvation.”

This is only one out
of many similar citations that might be given, but is sufficient to show that
in the observance of Sunday, the Catholic Church deliberately repudiates the
Word of the Lord, and sets itself above it. It has placed its Sabbath with an
entirely different day from the Sabbath of the Lord — a day which even God
Himself could not possibly have made His Sabbath, since on it He began His work
— in order to emphasize its claim to be above God. It teaches men that they are
to obey the Church rather than God.

Notice that the
citation speaks about the necessity of “keeping holy Sunday.” But God has not
made Sunday holy. In fact, the Bible mentions nothing about such a day. It does
mention the first day of the week, which it calls a working day, but Sunday, a
day composed of parts of two days, was made in Rome. The only day that God has
ever spoken of as holy is the seventh day of the week. That day He Him­self has
made holy, and all He asks of us is to keep it holy. But since God has not made
Sunday holy, it follows that if man is to keep it holy, man himself must make
it holy. All the sacredness that Sunday has is that which man gives to it. The
Sunday Sabbath, therefore, stands as the sign of man’s pretended power to make
things holy. For if man can make one thing holy, it is evident that he can make
anything holy. If man can make and keep a day holy, then he can make and keep
himself holy. The papal Sabbath is thus the sign of the pope’s claim to take
the place of the Lord as the sanctifier of sinners.

While the seventh day is
the sign of God’s power to save by His own works, Sunday is the sign of man’s
assumed power to save himself by his own works, entirely apart from and in
spite of the Lord. It repudiates the Lord in repudiating His Word. Take notice
that this is said of the papal Sunday, and not of all those who regard it as a
holy day. There are thousands who are keeping the papal day, honestly supposing
it to be the Sabbath of the Lord. Such, of course, believe in justification by
faith, although they unwittingly observe the sign of justification by works. It
is for the benefit of such people that this article is written, that they may
become wholly consistent in their professions of faith. We are dealing with
facts, regardless of how men may stand in relation to them; and the facts are
that the Lord’s Sabbath is justification by faith; the papal Sabbath means
justification by works, namely man’s own works. On which side will you stand?

—
written by Ellet J. Waggoner (1855-1916).
He was trained as a physician at Battle Creek College and obtained a
medical degree from the Bellevue Medical College in New York City. Because his
heart was in evangelism, he entered the ministry. He spent the last six years
of his life teaching at Dr. John Harvey Kellogg’s Battle Creek College in
Battle Creek, Michigan. Ω